One of the visionaries behind the very first healing lodge in Canada says Correctional Service Canada completely dismantled what the lodge once was, and Sharon McIvor is now concerned about safety inside.

In 1989, McIvor, then with the Native Women’s Association of Canada, was asked to be an Indigenous voice on the task force that redesigned women’s prisons in Canada. The group published the report “Creating Choices,” which led to five new prisons for women across the country, including Okimaw Ohci, the first healing lodge, which opened in Saskatchewan in 1995.

McIvor remembers one of the first meetings at the now-shuttered Prison for Women in Kingston, Ont., the only facility for federally-incarcerated women in the country at the time.

Inmates were holding a powwow, and McIvor watched their self-led drumming, dancing and what’s known as a grand entry.